The importance of being 'liked' in today's web-savvy world

MacKenzie Malone

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, August 1, 2012

There was a time when the words "being followed" had a negative implication, finding friends was harder than clicking a button and pinning was done with a tack on a cork board. But thanks to social media, all of those things mean one thing: people like you.

Meet the "like" button, a Facebook tool users can click to express their fondness for something. You see something you like, you click the "like" button, and now the internet knows you like it, too.

"It has become part of a social media language," said J.P. Elario of Elario Photography in Albany, N.Y. "We are in a Facebook era. When you like something, you equate it to Facebook."

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Some tips for staying well-liked online, from Stuart R. Jordan of Stuart R. Jordan Consulting of Norwalk:
Get involved and encourage involvement and engagement from followers.
Go out and actively ask people to follow you, then give them a reason to want to follow you.
Give information on a regular basis that is entertaining or involving. Give followers a reason to want to participate.
The way you can hurt yourself is by not listening or turning off the feedback channel. You'll see Facebook pages where a company has intentionally turned off the ability for people to post or message back.Whole key to social media is to encourage peple to participate and comment.

But what does it mean to be liked in today's society? And what effect does it have on the human psyche?

Elario has more than 3,700 Facebook friends, using the website as a tool to promote his photography. With the help of social media, he has been able to expand his photography business by posting his work on his blog.

"It's great for your confidence," Elario said. "`I put an image up, for example, and I had a lot of likes. It makes me feel good, and it makes me feel liked. It drives me to want to keep doing that stuff."

Social media sites help users draw large numbers of friends or followers, and users have the ability to reach thousands, even millions, of people all over the world. (Facebook caps friends lists at 5,000 and Twitter puts no limit on the followers people can have.)

"You're gonna connect with a lot more people on social media," Elario said. "I get friend requests thanks to what I put on my Facebook ... it's a chain reaction."

Stuart Jordan, managing director of Stuart R. Jordan Consulting in Norwalk, which specializes in online marketing strategies for businesses, called "likes" and "follows" a "vote of confidence" and says they are essential to his clients.

"If you can establish the relationship that comes with a like, it gives you the opportunity to build on that relationship through engagement and delivering messages and getting feedback, which is going to get results for whatever business you're working with," Jordan said.

Alan Ilagan, an Albany blogger who entertains a large Internet audience, said it feels good to be liked. He sees his popularity as confirmation he isn't completely rubbing people the wrong way.

And since humans are socially adept, the idea of being well-regarded can be good for you. Dr. Frank Doberman of Karner Psychological Associates in Albany said that connections and a sense of being liked make us feel good about living.

"By our nature, by our biology, by our temperament, we are social beings. And as social beings, connections with people elevate our spirits," Doberman said.

And, Doberman said, the more people who enjoy your presence, in person or digitally, the less isolated you might feel. It also spurs our creativity and opens a door for the sharing of ideas.

Despite all these positives, Doberman worries about the quality of the connections people make on social media sites.

"Our standards of knowing people have shifted," he said. "If you meet someone, you Google them. You don't ask people in the neighborhood what they are like, you don't ask colleagues."

Doberman believes that in an era of social media the idea of being liked is based around the ratings on a website, and not on what happens in the real world. In some instances, the connections we make online can help to boost an ego or replace social skills someone normally might not have.

"But using the Internet as a tool to feel liked can create a false sense of connectivity that might not satisfy the basic need for a sense of well-being.

"I worry about the changing definition of relationships," Doberman said. "Study after study about happiness always talks about an element of connectiveness. And social media websites give you the illusion of connectiveness when in actuality the connection is usually not there.--

Online interaction might make you think you're making some sort of connection, but it isn't necessarily there, he said.

Ilagan agrees that the connections we make online aren't always real.

"I think that with our ability to be constantly in touch with one another, we are making more connections, but they mean less and less."

And, he added, websites like Instagram and Twitter, which allow users to share information and pictures with other users, can foster a false sense of being liked.

"The greater danger is when people are raised on the Internet, and believe that it is some sort of reality," Ilagan said. "They enter the real world thinking this is the way we communicate, in short, punchy sound bites. I've seen it with certain people who can't follow a conversational thread, who are constantly moving from one topic to the next."

Don't fear social media, though. Doberman said that the more connections you make, the better off you ultimately will be.

Both Elario and Ilagan said that while they might not know all of their Twitter followers or Facebook friends, they know which ones count.

"Out of all my FaceBook and Twitter friends, I probably only know, or have met, about 300 people in real life," said Ilagan. "I don't think it's possible to be real-life friends with 5,000 people ... so I'm fine with having only met a small handful of virtual friends."